WHEN IT’S TIME TO LEAVE, LEAVE, by Gary North

The story of Lot’s wife is one of the oddest in the Bible. It is also one of the most depressing. What was it that motivated her to look back? Curiosity? Saying one last goodbye to her past? The desire to be the only living witness of an historic event? We are not told. What we do know is that she had violated God’s express command: "And it came to pass, when they had brought them forth abroad, that he said, Escape for thy life; look not behind thee, neither stay thou in all the plain; escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed" (Gen. 19:17).

Lot had pleaded not to have to head for the hills. He feared death in the mountains, he said. He asked to be allowed to enter a small city. He received his request. But this was not good enough for his wife. She could not break with the past emotionally. She just had to look back. She paid dearly.

Why salt? Salt was used to season things. It was also used on the altar (Lev. 2:3). It was used in Old Testament times as a means of military judgment: salting land destroyed its productivity (Jud. 9:45). A salted land is uninhabitable. "For he shall be like the heath in the desert, and shall not see when good cometh; but shall inhabit the parched places in the wilderness, in a salt land and not inhabited" (Jer. 17:6). This was the mean-ing of Lot’s wife, for salt and the judgment on Sodom were linked: "And that the whole land thereof is brimstone, and salt, and burning, that it is not sown, nor beareth, nor any grass groweth therein, like the overthrow of Sodom, and Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboim, which the LORD overthrew in his anger, and in his wrath" (Deut. 29:23).

Salt was placed on the altar as a sign of God’s curse on death. Jesus said that the sacrifices laid on God’s eternal altar are salted (Mark 9:49). Salt is a positive agent of flavoring and a negative agent of destruction. As with fire, it can be used for both positive and negative sanctions.

Jesus compared salt with His followers. "Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men" (Matt. 5:13). Salt is a good thing while it is tasty, useless when it isn’t. "Salt is good: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be seasoned? It is neither fit for the land, nor yet for the dunghill; but men cast it out. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear" (Luke 14:34-35). The point is clear: like chaff that resembles wheat but is fit for the fire (Matt. 3:12), so is salt without savor. Those who call themselves the people of God who do not bear fruit are fooling themselves. They will be cast out on judgment day (Matt. 7:23).

Lot’s wife is the archetype of salt without savor. She looked back, thereby linking herself to the fate of Sodom. She had lived there for years. There, her husband had been vexed continually by the evil around him (II Pet. 2:7-8). Her daughters had married residents of the city who had refused to leave with them. They were about to become widows. Covenantally, Lot’s wife was a representative of Sodom. Her act of rebellion marked her a citizen of Sodom. When Sodom was placed under God’s ban, so was she. Her fate and Sodom’s were linked by covenant and salt. Through her husband, she was covenanted to God. Through her act, she was covenanted to Sodom. Because her act was openly rebellious against God’s specific revelation to her husband regarding not looking back, her act permanently sealed her covenant with Sodom. Her act of defiance was an act of covenant renewal with Sodom.

Christianity looks forward to the day of judgment, which is the end of sin. All of history moves toward this inescapable day, when all scores will be settled by God. Christianity is future-oriented. This future-orientation has shaped Western Civilization. Augustine’s City of God persuaded Western thinkers of the decree of God for history, which is worked out always in terms of the permanent heavenly kingdom. The Puritans’ postmillennial vision of the kingdom of God on earth set forth the inevitability of the progressive fulfillment of the Lord’s prayer: ". . . thy kingdom come, thy will be done, in earth as it is in heaven."

The heart of Communism, as F. N. Lee argued at such great length, was its world-transforming positive eschatology (Communist Eschatology, 1974). (As one wag put it, "By the time I finished reading that book, the Berlin Wall had fallen.") Communism, more than any other secular movement in history, proclaimed an apostate version of the Puritans’ eschatology. This was the key to its success. As Ludwig von Mises wrote in 1922, "Nothing has helped the spread of socialist ideas more than this belief that Socialism is inevitable. Even the opponents of Socialism are for the most part bewitched by it: it takes the heart out of their resistance." (Socialism, Yale University Press, 1951, p. 282.)

History is the story of a war between two kingdoms, Satan’s and God’s. The study of history is a valid pastime and even a calling for dedicated specialists, for history is the working out of God’s decree. History has meaning because of God’s decree. History is the arena for covenant-keepers’ progressive working out of God’s principles of ethics, both personal and social. It is, in this sense, a laboratory for the post-resurrection world, a realm of trial and error, covenant-keeping and covenant-breaking.

The study of history and the appreciation of the work of God’s people in the past should not lead to nostalgia for the past. Widespread nostalgia is a mark of cultural degeneracy. The good old days were not all that good. I agree with P. J. O’Rourke on this matter. When you hear about the good old days, think one word: dentistry. The good old days led to today. If today is bad, then there was something missing in the good old days.

History is eschatological. It moves toward a final judgment. This is its offense in the mind of the covenant-breaker. This is the underlying motivation of Darwinism and all evolutionary thought: to remove eschatology from history. The evolutionists want to remove all purpose from the origins of the world. They are willing to affirm the heat death of the universe – the cold, dead hand of absolute zero – rather than face the implications of the heat death of the lake of fire. Modern man speaks of heat death, meaning the death of heat. He prefers this impersonal cosmic possibility to the highly personal eternality of heat. The thought of a flame burning without dying out through the consumption of material – whether the burning bush or the burning resurrected – is anathema to them.

The war of the worldviews in history leads to the victory of Christ’s people in time. This is because of God’s sanctions in history. Good is rewarded with benefits; evil is rewarded with failure (Deut. 28). Very few Christians believe this today. Pessimillennialists – F. N. Lee’s term – believe the opposite, that good progressively fails and evil progressively triumphs in history. This eschatological pessimism regarding the church’s work in history has, to cite Mises, taken the heart out of their resistance. More than this: it has taken the heart out of their efforts to fulfill the terms of the Great Commission (Matt. 28:18-20).

Modern Christians are afflicted with nostalgia. They look to the 1950’s and get all warm and fuzzy. Pat Robertson became a multimillionaire because of what is now known as the Family Channel. It was built with late-night reruns of 1950’s situation comedies. "Nick at Night" imitated Robertson, with equal success. Robertson’s original audience was fundamentalist Christians. He soon found out what they wanted: nostalgia.

Fifty years ago, hard-core fundamentalists refused to go to the movies. Today, they and their grandchildren watch the movies the grandparents missed the first time around. "This is worth watching," they say. The good old days look pretty good.

But where was the God of the Bible in most of Hollywood’s movies? Where was He in "Ozzie and Harriet"? There were two things that the families in the 1950’s sitcoms rarely did on-screen: go to church or watch television. Like the movies’ twin beds for married adults, that world was a fantasy world. This is the curse of nostalgia: it longs for a fantasy world. It looks back to a world that never was, and mourns the loss.

The city of Zoar was a small town. It was surely not the center of culture that Sodom was. In retrospect, that was its salvation.

Lot was not ready to move from the city to the mountain. He was not the equivalent of Jeremiah Johnson or Grizzly Adams. He was a city man who had not tended sheep in a long time. So, God spared Sodom until Lot reached Zoar. He spared Zoar because Lot had decided to take up residence there.

Sodom had vexed Lot, but he had refused to leave. Why? Because he had made his peace with evil. He had become comfortable with his segregated way of life in Sodom. But Sodom had become ever-more consistent with its evil presuppositions. The evil of Sodom could not be kept locked outside his front door any longer. To stay in Sodom was to perish with the Sodomites. It was time to leave.

Abraham had left Ur of the Chaldees. Lot had gone with him. Abraham had bargained with God to spare Sodom for the sake of as few as ten righteous men. The figure was too high. Lot had to leave town again. He was wise enough to do so, although he had to be pushed out by Sodomites and pulled out by angels. But his wife just could not bring herself to make a clean break with the past. Perhaps she was afflicted with nostalgia. We are not told. What we are told is that she could not bear to leave without one more glance at the past. She never turned around again.

Jimmy Duranty used to sing a song that went like this: "Did you ever have the feeling that you wanted to go, and then you had the feeling that you wanted to stay?" Life is like this, Paul affirmed. "For I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ; which is far better: Nevertheless to abide in the flesh is more needful for you" (Phil. 1:23-24). So is life lived in comfortable, familiar surroundings. Comfortable people do not leave. Only when they become uncomfortable do they leave.

The economist says that we exchange one set of circumstances for another. When we are dissatisfied with one set of conditions, we seek another set. Mises called this human action. But what makes us unsatisfied? Our mental comparison of our present condition and its likely outcome with a potential future condition and the cost of achieving it. In Luke’s account, Jesus warned His followers of salt without savor immediately after His discussion of the necessity of counting the cost (Luke 14:28-33).

Lot counted the cost: of staying in Sodom (high), living in the mountains (high), and living in Zoar (tolerable). His wife refused to count the cost of looking back at the doomed cities on the plain. The lesson is clear: when it’s time to leave, don’t look back.

Copyright 1997, Institute for Christian Economics

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